Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, episode 186, Lifting the Lost, Part 4.

From the earliest moment of the idea of an Allied occupation of Japan, it was always clear

that part of the occupation would be making somebody pay for the war.

This is another area of the occupation where the shadow of World War I loomed very large.

The thinking, as it went, was that the leadership had to be held accountable in Germany

and in Japan in order to expose the crimes of both countries.

That way, there could be no later claim that the access

cause was actually legitimate or represented some kind of just grievance. There must not and

absolutely could not be any case for the vanquished powers to claim the moral high ground.

It's important for us to note, though, that the idea of one country placing the rulers of another

country on trial was before World War II completely unprecedented.

Other rulers had been punished, to be sure, Napoleon's whole exile situation would be a good

example.

But the idea of claiming jurisdiction over another country's government and putting those

leaders on public trial was something that was fundamentally new.

The whole idea raised some uncomfortable questions.

After all, strictly speaking, everything both the Nazi leadership

and Japanese leadership did was, strictly speaking, legal. From the German and Japanese

perspectives, they were the ones who decided what the law was. So what law could they possibly

be prosecuted under? Even by 1945, the final form all of this

would take was an open question. In that year, the American Secretary of State, Cordell Hull,

told his Soviet and British counterparts that if he had his way, the Allies, quote,

...